Normally when someone offers me a Buck code I am generally listening properly and don’t get into an incredibly embarrassing situation with our site admin. When that was all sorted out, I was set up to play a ‘Metroid-vania adventure’ about post-apocalyptic dogs.

Wait, dogs?!

Well, I guess they also need to tell their stories when civilisation ends!

Ok, it’s not actually about real dogs that walk around on four legs and sniff each other’s bottoms, this is a game about anthropomorphised (read: they take on human traits but have fur and snouts and stuff) dogs.

As this is a first look, I’ll be ignoring all the bugs that may have cropped up. Also, I was given a game code for this review, blah blah blah legalities SORTED!

It's me, your glorious leader! For those of you who have been here on UFO Gamers before its' inevitable great ressurection, I'm Remus, and I have an anger problem. But actually, I don't. I have the misfortune of being alive in 2016, and that pisses me off and gives me enough to bitch about, every hour of every day. I used to enjoy things, really. I used to be happy in a past life, but now the only thing that keeps me warm at night is the thought that actually, violence IS the answer, even if it's just verbal violence.

And yes. I am talking about this gaming life, not about my issues that only a professional can deal with.

I do understand that nostalgia is shitty sometimes, and I do understand that the past was full of awful UI designs, but at the same time, it brought great gems into the light, gems that gave its users a sense of joy, wonder and sometimes even bliss.

So instead of bumbling at every bad thing that the games industry produces, I'll try to analyzie the good things that the past brought us, that influenced generations of game-designers, but also the horrible decisions that the industry has made.

Until just 26-ish years ago, my home country has suffered through more than half a century of communism. Although that threat has long since faded away, the awful choices that this country has made from 1990 on forward, has made (around half of) its population nostalgic for the totalitarian regime. How sad is that?

I have no idea why I recently saw an analogy between communism and the game-industry, but I did, and from this moment on, each week (or maybe more often) I'll talk about the GLORIOUS PAST, SO GLORIOUS THAT IT UNITES OUR PARTY IN JOY AND FULFILLMENT, COMRADES.

P.C. Gaming: Post-Communist Gaming

- When FPSes had health-meters, RPGs were isometric and adventure games were mostly shit.

There's got to be one thing said for hard games. Like aew good to grab hold of, bounce on... no wait... don't bounce on the game, it won’t end well for your machine.

This game is hard. At the start it has two game modes which are aptly named after me at the end of a Saturday night; easy and very easy. I don't know if there are others yet, because I can only finish this game on very easy. This game is tough, and if you manage to complete it on your first go then that's quite frankly amazing.

In this game, you play as the escaping crew of a prison ship shot down by planetary defences. Your escape pod is built better than that Brad who is always in the gym and quaffing five litres of protein shakes a day, because it somehow manages to penetrate (teehee) twelve floors into a luckily-placed dungeon. You start with two people, and must navigate a randomly-generated labyrinth of rooms to the lift.

I'm beginning to think there's a slow invasion going on. Water buckets. They're everywhere. You expect to find things again and again, I suppose, the commonplace items, but this is ridiculous. Water bucket, water bucket, water bucket. If I had a pound for every water bucket I found over the course of a day, I'd be rich beyond my wildest dreams. Or I'd have about £20. I guess my dreams are pretty tame.

Water buckets aside, it's been an interesting week. I helped CaiM, who lives on an island, build the worst bridge ever to be built in the history of people building bad bridges. It's functional, but boy is it ugly.

CaiM's house is lovely. Still a work in progress at this stage, but it's like a plantation manor off of the deep south. Except he grows pumpkins.

Wanna infect the entire world with something? The jolly people at Ndemic Creations actually did with their terribly popular title, Plague Inc., which has over 70 million players worldwide. And you could be part of the fun too, possibly after Christmas dinner with the whole family with a shiny new version of the game made for the table top!

Yes indeed, everyone's favourite infect-em-up is becoming a board game, if the Kickstarter campaign goes well, and look at it, it already is! You have until 31 May to pledge some pennies and then you'll receive the game itself in November, just in time to gross everyone out around the dinner table during the festive period. Perfect.

Poor little Isaac. Not only does his mother pick on him so, but now he has to have his extended despair paraded on the consoles. The Binding of Isaac is a top-down, rogue-like, twin-stick cry-em-up that's just about as addictive as it is twisted. If you're a fan of poop, blood, snot, vomit and various other excreta, this game may well be for you. Though I would probably recommend a psychological evaluation as well, to be perfectly honest with you.

The Afterbirth DLC adds lots more gameplay, room designs, enemies, items and what-have-you and is available in its own little package from today, priced $10.99 (or the rough equivalent in your local currency) on Xbox One and Playstation 4.

Virtual reality. We hear a lot about it, don't we. And a lot of people are releasing games for Oculus Rift and Gear VR, such as this port from Square Enix: turn-based strategy kill-em-up, Hitman: GO. Here are some 'facts' from the 'fact sheet':

features 91 levels, including the Paris Opera from Hitman: Blood Money and St. Petersburg Stakeout from Hitman 2: Silent Assassin

Oculus Rift will run the game at 90 frames per second and offers "seamless headtracking"

it all looks like little scale models

kinda like a board game

Agent 47 is still bald

the game is "reimagined" and "immersive" with VR and allows you to experience the game in a "completely new way"

And here is a screenshot, for good measure.

The Oculus Rift version will set you back $9.99, while the Gear VR version will cost $7.99 and both will be available from 12 May.

Kickstarter has been responsible for many a great undertaking, and perhaps none so great as this: Chris Huelsbeck is seeking $75,000 for the creation of an album of orchestral versions of pieces from the amazingly-scored classic shoot-em-up platformer Turrican II: The Final Fight.

You can back the Kickstarter campaign by clicking here, or if you prefer, you can have a listen to The Great Bath, as composed by Chris Huelsbeck and produced by LorD and Master, whoever that might be, by clicking play on this here video:

Of all the things you could be watching on Twitch, there are likely to be some of you that will go and actually watch the Pokémon National Championships. I didn't know this was a thing, but evidently, people will be battling the crap out of their pocket monsters in the UK, Germany and Italy.

If you're interested in it, the Twitch addresses will follow, but if you're really interested in it, then grab yourself some tickets and head along to the Exhibition Centre, Liverpool on 14 - 15 May, the Kongress Palais, Kessel, Germany on 21 - 22 May or Mediolanum Forum, Assago, Milan, Italy on 11 - 12 June. If you do that, then you will receive a free shiny Machamp for your copy of Pokémon Omega Ruby, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, Pokémon X or Pokémon Y. And if that's not incentive enough, I don't know what is.

Alternatively, you can tune into the livestreams of these events right here:

I have a potted history with side-scrolling beat-em-ups. In sum, I don't like them, but I don't think you can argue with Max's raison d'être. Max, the protagonist of Dead Island: Retro Revenge is out to rescue his cat. Which is nice.

This 16-bit side-scrolling beat-em-up will include lots of blood, some fire, and a lot of nostalgia for those who don't own a retro console or some port or other of classic titles like Streets of Rage. It's included on the definitive edition of Dead Island: Riptide, which will cost you £29.99 from all good gaming retailers, including Steam, for t'is available from 31 May on Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PC.

A while ago, I found a laptop and a CCTV camera. Then it came to me! The software on the laptop had face recognition software, but no decent way of detecting faces. So I managed to put the CCTV camera with the laptop, add an AK47 assault rifle and Bob was very much my uncle, for I had created a turret that shot people other than me! I placed it on my roof, in case of attack and found that the blasted thing kept me up all night. It moves and scans the area in a 180-degree arc and in doing so, makes a noise like an old dot-matrix printer, constantly printing out reams and reams of paper. There you go, that's the price of safety, I suppose.

I spent the following days gathering, talking to Althawadi and Draekal, of course. Things seemed to be going fine on this island. Nothing much to report, in fact. The helicopter hadn't come to attack, the animals even seemed to be more docile than normal. The only thing was, I wasn't getting any sleep because of this damned turret. I could switch it off, but then that would defeat the purpose of having it in the first place - no, I had to maintain its function. And then, just the other night, it came to me: I was exhausted. I lay down to sleep and even remember the sound of the turret on my roof fading into nothing. For the first time in a long time, I slept. That must have been when it happened.

Bethesda are jolly good at making games. Though the consensus seems to be that they're good at making single-player games, what with DOOM's multiplayer beta falling flat on its arse and receiving a lot of criticism during the time it was open. Can they pull off the single-player experience with their revival of this great franchise, though? Let's have a little look at the launch trailer, shall we?

Well, that was quite literally rip-roaring, wasn't it. Bethesda's reboot of the seminal first-person shooter comes out on 13 May on PC, Xbox One and PS4.